3 AM
by Angelic Thrall
Summary: A NiniSatine songfic. Nini reflects on how Satine's changed over the years, and how Satine truly is behind her masks. Nini's POV. Review, please.


**3 Am**  
_Author's Note:_ I've written a lot of songfics and listened to a lot of Matchbox Twenty during my years of fanfic writing, but… I've never written a Moulin Rouge songfic, let alone with the song 3 AM. It just never struck me as a suitable song. But hopefully, I've managed to make it something. Review, please? Hate something? Loved something? Tell me. I live for criticism (criticism, not flaming).  
  
  
_[She says it's cold outside and she hands me my raincoat  
She's always worried about things like that]_  
  
She's not as perfect as everyone thinks she is. The Sparkling Diamond, the Star, the woman with the blood colored lips and flawless skin… She's not as perfect as everyone thinks she is.  
  
Perhaps, when we were children, she might have been. When she ran around in the shadows, her hair a torrent of Irish fire around her ivory cheeks flushed strawberry, when she smiled and everything seemed to stop. When all there was was her laughter, her laughter and her smiling.  
  
I stopped believing she changed because she grew up. I grew up, and I haven't changed. I'm still dancing, I'm still pinning my hair up, I'm still smirking and sneering. I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. She was never that fake before.  
  
She doesn't stop me anymore, if the ashen streets are paved with water from the clouds above, and the sadness there, reflects in her eyes. She doesn't smile, and nudge a finely tailored petticoat into my arms. It never kept me warm anyway. I shouldn't miss it.  
  
_[She says it's all gonna end and it might as well be my fault  
And she only sleeps when its raining  
And she screams and her voice is straining]_  
  
Everything seems better when you're a child, even if you grew up on the streets, even if you grew up beneath a red windmill. Everything seems gloriously rich and wonderful, like the Garden of Eden. It's only later, you realize the apple's fallen into your hand, and the snakes coiling around your throat.  
  
She seemed better, and I guess, I seemed better. You can't really title a child evil, but you can see the shadows lurk around it, just as you can see the way the light prefers another. That's what we were, and that's what we are. A shade of gray, to match her tone of alabaster.  
  
Our differences were what combined us, locked us together. Our differences today, are what tears us apart. She didn't blame me for anything then, not like she does now. Yes, I told the Duke what everyone else wouldn't, but I had my reasons. I can't stand seeing her happy, not when she's so blind to everything. And I've waited in the shadows too long.  
  
I loved the rain; she hated it. When we walked the mud struck streets, and she peered up with sapphire eyes, I had to smile. She loved watching the sky, and she flinched at every roll of thunder. I think the weather affects her stronger then it ever affected anyone else. She was what the heavens wanted. You never saw a happier woman (whore) when the sun shined, and yet…  
  
You never saw someone so beautifully stricken with grief when there was nothing but rain sliding down the windows.  
  
_[And she says baby  
it's 3 am I must be lonely  
When she says baby  
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes  
She says the rain's gonna wash away I believe it]_  
  
There's not a day that goes by that I don't remember us as children. That I don't remember what we felt together. I wonder though, if she expected more. I grew up believing it would all crumble, that everything I ever felt, everything that was ever given to me, would crumble someday. She grew up believing she'd treasure and hold every memory, everything, to the very last breath she choked out.  
  
We used to joke about our beliefs together. We both decided that there was no God, or if there was, he just didn't care. But she put faith in something. She put faith in people; I put faith in myself.  
  
She's afraid of the truth, really. She said so herself. It's the cancer that eats her away; it's the poison in her lungs, in every breath she draws in, she knows… but she pretends she doesn't. She's always pretending.  
  
She never pretended with me. When the whole world seemed like it would crash, and the lighting echoed in the empty hallways, and the thunder struck through our souls, she'd willingly crawl beneath the unclean sheets and into my arms. There was nothing romantic about a terrified, shaking woman. There was nothing romantic about us.  
  
She told me to make it stop. To make everything stop.  
  
She wanted to fall off the end of the world, and keep falling.  
  
_[She's got a little bit of something, God it's better than nothing  
and in her color portrait world she believes that she's got it all]_  
  
I saw her laugh the other day. I never hated her more.  
  
I saw her laugh before everyone; we hadn't seen her for days. I saw her laugh when she had tears in her eyes, her hair pinned up with a few curls left down to frame a stricken face. She wore gray and white, the kind of corset that flattered without demanding attention, and a skirt of the finest silk that pooled at her ankles. Without a mark on her, without a blood stained handkerchief in her hand. You would have thought she was the purest thing in the world.  
  
I saw her laugh, and I've never hated her more.  
  
Without the touch of absinthe in my veins, I can't afford to laugh.  
  
_[She swears the moon don't hang quite as high as it used to  
And she only sleeps when its raining  
And she screams, and her voice is straining]_  
  
I can't remember why, and I don't really remember how, or what happened… but I remember her screaming. I remember her throwing things, expensive gifts from her admirers, roses, necklaces, everything. I saw her rip the finest clothes she'd ever worn.  
  
I don't think she saw me, but that's not surprising. I fit in so very well with the shadows, after all.  
  
It was almost as bad as seeing her laugh, when she stumbled to the floor, groping the leg of a cherry wood table for support. Her fingers so thin, her whole form ungodly frail, the lace slip she wore hanging from her shoulders, riding up pale thighs. Cheeks wet with crystalline tears, bottom lip trembling, mascara running… I smiled.  
  
She's never looked so real.  
  
"Nice to see the Queen come down to the commoners…" The venom crawled into my voice, and hid between the syllables.  
  
I remember it was raining.  
  
_[And she says baby  
It's 3 am I must be lonely  
When she says baby  
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes  
She says the rain's gonna wash away I believe it]_  
  
She looked up, bloodshot eyes searching my face for any hint of recognition, and somewhere, she found it. Fingers beneath her eyes, she sat up straight, wiping away the tears that had fallen, grinding the black makeup into her fingertips. Her tears stained the lace of her slip, marring it.  
  
Sniffling, her legs curled beneath her, one hand still lingering against the table leg, bottom lip caught between her teeth, her smile was weak. Everything about her screamed weak.  
  
I turned my face away, and drew in a silent breath between clenched teeth. My hatred, my love for her, hasn't changed. Not even when she's lost the strength she promised to always have.  
  
I hate weakness. I hated helping her.  
  
_[She believes that life is made up of all that you're used to  
and the clock on the wall has been stuck at 3 for days, and days  
She thinks that happiness is the mat that sits on her doorway  
but outside its stopped raining]_  
  
I doubt she remembered that. She offered me the usual, tightlipped smile in the morning as we passed, the usual barely murmured 'Good Morning, Nini.'. I've never found anything good about mornings in the Moulin Rouge, maybe that's why I never replied.  
  
Rehearsal that day was like rehearsal everyday before. We acted as we were told to, we turned when wanted, we smile and dazzled and amazed. We practiced and practiced and practiced. And she, she sat beside the Duke and pretended and pretended and pretended.  
  
To everyone else, she was perfect, with that smile never really fading from her mouth. I wonder if anyone ever bothered to look into her eyes.  
  
_[And she says baby  
it's 3am I must be lonely  
When she says baby  
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes  
She says the rain's gonna wash away I believe it]_  
  
She told me she loved me once, beneath the covers of my bed, when her fingers were in my hair, and my lips to her neck. Back then, her heart was strong, and blood never touched her lips.  
  
That was the day she started pretending. And I think, that was the day I started pretending as well.  



End file.
